That’s the message from the Dunlap Education Association following the vote of the School Board to hire a national search firm to help find a new district superintendent.

“We felt like the board didn’t listen to us during the budget deficit process (last winter),” union co-president Angie Connor said this week. “Now we feel like the board isn’t listening to us again, and just when the administration was working to mend the relationship with the teachers.”

An unusually divided School Board voted 4-3 at its July meeting to hire the firm School Exec Connect to assist it in filling the vacancy created when Jay Marino left for the superintendent’s job in Antioch. Lisa Parker has been interim superintendent since Marino announced his resignation in March.

The vote has reignited some of the district’s recent discontent.

Members of the School Board spent a lot of last winter sitting in district school gymnasiums in front of hundreds of angry residents and teachers where they absorbed the unveiled insults about their job performance. The unrest was caused by an administrative plan that called for teacher layoffs, increased student fees and program reductions needed to plug a $2 million budget deficit. The plan passed 5-2, and 12 teachers lost their jobs.

The anger left lasting scars. The teachers union and some in the community have newfound concerns that the majority of the School Board continues along the wrong track. They believe there should be no hurry to find a new superintendent, especially with the capable Parker at the helm. And they believe that the hiring of School Exec Connect, the same firm that brought Marino to Dunlap and then led him to his new job in Antioch, was a tone-deaf decision. They say they wouldn’t have much confidence in that firm’s recommendations.

“After all this district has gone through it’s baffling to me that they would hire the same firm,” said Karen Disharoon, a visible and outspoken critic of the board’s budget deficit plan and now of its process to hire a new superintendent. “That (hiring) didn’t end so well, did it?”

Board members Paul Park, Dawn Bozeman and Beth Rhee voted against hiring School Exec Connect. Park said Thursday the decision to hire School Exec Connect was premature.

“My opinion is that we are not ready to hire a search firm,” Park said. “We need to first discuss and reach a consensus regarding what we need to focus on and where we want to take Dunlap schools. Once we have an idea what we are going to do, then we can come up with a qualification of a new superintendent to conduct the job.”

Page 2 of 2 - Park said there is not even a board consensus on whether it should promote to superintendent from within the district or to search the country for the best candidate.

Bozeman said the process feels rushed, and there’s no good reason to get started with it by making a portion of the district angry with the board.

“We haven’t had time to let the district heal after what it went through,” Bozeman said. “There’s ample time to take a breath, slow it down and make sure we get this important decision right. There’s been so much change in the district this year that the community and the teachers union and others are just asking us to please slow down.”

Board President Amy Fairfield Doering dismisses the idea that selecting the search firm last week was in any way rushing the process.

“I’m not surprised by the (4-3) vote,” Fairfield Doering said. “But it is disturbing to me. This is a process that we’ve been talking about since Jay resigned in March. We have board work to do and delaying it one month leads to delaying it again the month after that and the month after that. The process needs to be followed.”

Fairfield Doering was critical of the uncommonly raucous debate at last week’s meeting.

“That was not a professional board meeting,” she said. “That was way out of line.”

Interim Superintendent Parker’s only comment about the superintendent search came in the form of a prepared statement that gave almost no hint of what it felt like to be caught in the middle of the debate about the search for the next superintendent.

“Dunlap is an outstanding school district with exceptional teachers, staff, building principals and a very supportive community,” she said. “This is the most important decision that a Board of Education will make.”

Scott Hilyard can be reached at 686-3244 or shilyard@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @scotthilyard.